Understanding Asian-style
democracy By Michael
Vatikiotis
SINGAPORE - Thailand's
September 19 military coup has revived a
long-dormant debate about the suitability of
Western-style liberal democracy in Asia. The coup,
subsequent imposition of martial law and the
suspension of civil liberties in Thailand has
prompted many Western officials and commentators
to decry an apparent reversal in political
development toward a full-blown liberal democracy.
Washington has described the coup as a "U-turn".
More conservative political actors in
Southeast Asia meanwhile
rushed to describe
liberal democracy as a cumbersome obstacle to
reliable government and social stability, even as
they lamented the coup. Singaporean Prime Minister
Lee Hsien Loong said: "Western-style democracy has
not always delivered stable, legitimate and
effective government." Indonesian Vice President
Jusuf Kalla told a Washington audience at the end
of September that democracy was bad for stability.
Even respected Western-educated
intellectuals such as Indonesian Defense Minister
Juwono Sudharsono drew salutary lessons from the
Thai coup. In an interview with the local media,
he stressed the apparent popular support for the
Thai military's intervention. "Maybe this is a
lesson for our politicians here," he said. "Stop
bickering, squabbling, money politics, otherwise
sooner or later our military might intervene on
behalf of the people who are yearning for some
degree of decisiveness and consistency."
Indeed, if you join the dots on Asia's
contemporary political map, the emerging pattern
is one of rising popular concern about corruption
and honesty and people willing to short-circuit
legal process - even at the risk of their freedom
- to remove bad or divisive leaders. The reason
the majority of urban Thais welcomed the
military's suspension of democracy is that the
government of prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra
was considered corrupt and intolerant of dissent.
The same concern for probity explains why crowds
as large as 300,000 people have sat in the rain
outside the office of Taiwanese President Chen
Shui-bian in a bid to oust him from office over
corruption charges.
Popular
impatience What then does this popular
impatience with due process say about freedom and
democracy in Asia ?
First of all, it
suggests that legitimacy is not about ballots and
numbers but about moral authority. In the absence
of strong and fair courts of law, people judge
their leaders according to their moral standing;
you lose that and you lose your mandate. You will
be challenged in the street because you cannot be
challenged fairly in court or removed by your
peers. People mistrust institutions such as courts
and parliament because there is the perception
that those with power and money can subvert them.
Freedom is not yet perceived to be guaranteed by
institutions of law.
The people of Bangkok
welcomed the tanks with roses, even though in the
process of removing the government the army
abrogated the most liberal constitution the Thais
have ever had. That's because the constitution,
liberal as it was, had not been implemented
properly. Few of the mechanisms built into the
charter to check the abuse of power worked.
Fear and insecurity were other major
reasons people supported this coup. Thaksin was
defiant in the face of popular protests. He hid
behind alleged plots to assassinate him and veiled
threats of violence. A growing number of Thais
feared the possibility of a society torn apart and
divided, leading to violence. The army was seen as
protecting freedom.
All this leads us to
consider whether freedom has its limits in an
Asian context: Are people content with leadership
that can be trusted - and by the same token,
discontented when it cannot? Although it was
fashionable in the 1990s for some Asian
intellectuals and politicians to argue that people
were willing to trade individual freedom for
economic prosperity under enlightened leadership,
events at the end of the decade, most notably in
Indonesia, suggested that individuals value their
freedom and understand the value of their vote.
There was no question that Indonesians
with little or no education living in remote
villages at the back end of Java knew what they
were voting for two years ago when they voted for
the first time in direct presidential elections.
It is wrong to suggest that ordinary citizens will
put primordial ties of religion and ethnicity
before anything else when they vote for leadership
if their sense of national identity is strong
enough. The lesson: don't question the
understanding and desire for freedom even at the
lowest levels of traditional society.
However, the reality today, reinforced by
efforts in two emerging democracies, Thailand and
Taiwan, to overthrow legitimately elected
governments is that freedom is still viewed
subjectively - meaning that it is not a zero-sum
game. People will tolerate the suspension of
freedoms to gain in other areas such as security,
clearing up corruption, and national unity.
Notably, the majority of the millions who voted in
Indonesia's 2004 presidential elections were
under-educated and living in rural areas; those
who supported the Thai coup and who want to oust a
democratically elected leader in Taiwan are urban
and educated.
The lesson from all this is
to accept that democracy is imperfect but
necessary. Democracy's institutional weaknesses in
the Asian context leave the door open to its
subversion in the interests of equally basic
elements of governance such as honesty,
transparency and security. Confusing oscillation
between demands for democracy and equally strident
demands for honesty and stability doesn't mean
that Asians want less freedom; it just shows that
they won't be fooled.
Michael
Vatikiotis is senior visiting research fellow
at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies and
former editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review.
